1932 Ford Deuce - Down & Dirty, Take 2

Hot rodding tends to repeat itself: Wait around long enough and your favorite trend will reappear, or your favorite car will be resurrected or recreated. We can’t decide if this version of the famed Eastwood & Barakat Deuce highboy sedan is the former or the latter. We’ll let you decide for yourself.

2/9Looking identical to the original, this should convince those caught up in endless body tweaks and nonsensical styling changes that the basic Henry Ford sedan can be a terrific starting point as created in 1932. As Deuces go, Tudor sedans are still affordable, and you know there are a million repro parts.

First, some background. The significance of the E&B is it was the first primered and porous car to appear on a HOT ROD cover (Nov. 1982), and it was pieced together from castoff parts, resulting in a street-legal Deuce that ran in the 11s on the cheap. There was nothing exotic about the construction, components, or talents required to create it. In other words, it was absolutely unspectacular by today’s standards, but in 1982, it served as a reminder and inspiration that hot rodding can and should be fun. With more of a performance bent than the typical street rod of the times, this Tudor also served to draw some street-machine guys into the muscle-car world. And some consider this the first rat rod, or at least an early icon of that current trend. In 2006, in prep for the 75th anniversary of the 1932 Ford, the E&B was named as one of the 75 most significant ’32 Fords of all time. That’s a whole lot of impact for a beater that took just 12 weeks to build and one that only existed for a few months.

It started in 1982 when Pasadena, California, pals Pete “P-wood” Eastwood and Rick Barakat pooled their collective parts stashes and talents to build a street racer that could run at local SoCal tracks—you know, way back when quarter-mile dragstrips existed in SoCal. Even in the ’80s, costs were escalating, so P-wood and Barakat wanted to “keep the costs and efforts down, so you’re not married to it,” according to Gray Baskerville’s article in the Nov. 1982 HRM, “Down & Dirty.”

P-wood had already built a gang of Deuce chassis by 1982, so this was one of his typical efforts set up for a small-block Chevy, Turbo 400, and ’57 Ford station wagon rear. (Hot rodders favor the ’57–’59 Ford station wagon and Ranchero rears because they use larger bearings and brakes and have smooth pumpkins, sans dimples, that look better than other 9-inch rears.) The front four-bar suspension, shock mounts, rear ladder bars, and brake components came from a quick sprint to Pete and Jake’s, which at the time was still in neighboring Temple City. Barakat provided the mildly modified 355 Chevy, running flat-top pistons, a mild cam, a Z28 intake, and a 780-cfm Holley carb.

3/9This Baskerville shot from 1982 at Orange County International Raceway is what we expected in the smoke-and-fire department this go ’round. Unfortunately, Barakat did not get the memo. Still, this gives you the opportunity to compare the original sedan to its re-creation.

P-wood found the rusty Deuce Tudor body for $300, dirt cheap even for the time. The body had been lid-side-down in a ravine for too long, and the top had almost rusted away. Sitting belly up caused rust in the lower regions, too, resulting in a rotten body from top to bottom. Ever the good scrounger, Pete knew of a good top left over from a Tudor-to-phaeton conversion, and he welded it to the body with a 3-inch chop. For a top insert, he screwed in a section of roof from an old station wagon.

At the time of the ’82 article, the Deuce was running high 11s at 117-plus mph in the quarter. That e.t. moved down as tweaking and time produced improved results, but P-wood and Barakat’s short attention span and newer projects resulted in a quick sale to new partners Rick Rotundo and Joey DeMarco. They yanked the body and sold it to friend Brent Bodily in Syracuse, Utah, then put a roadster body atop the old E&B chassis. Wanting to take his old-sedan-as-new-roadster out for a test drive, P-wood promptly wrecked it the week it was completed. At this time in his life, let’s just say no one was surprised. He pulled the chassis out from under it, built a new frame, replaced the mangled front end, and handed the roadster back to DeMarco, who drives it to this day. And that was the end of the “world’s fastest rusto-rod,” as it was aptly named by Baskerville.

Fast-forward 30 years, and both Eastwood and Barakat still have fond memories of their past exploits in the long-gone and now-famous Deuce. When P-wood mentioned he still had the original wrecked frame behind his garage after all these years, they both got that glimmer in their eyes, and the Down & Dirty resto-recreation construction commenced.

7/9Returned to Barakat by Utah’s Brent Bodily, this is the actual dash from the original car—scratches and all. Barakat was amazed at some of the pieces that floated back to the car, like the license plates.

Brent Bodily had long ago built a beautiful, arrow-straight, black Tudor out of the original body, which now belongs to a Syracuse friend, so a new body was found. P-wood was able to borrow DeMarco’s roadster, promising not to repeat his past transgressions, to help fill in the brain drain about small details of how he used to build a Deuce chassis. Back in 1982, everything that could be unbolted had been scavenged off the wrecked frame for the roadster.

8/9One of the hardest parts of the rebuild was finding Mustang II seats. Blue and orange clash, yet this is how it went when scrounging together an old beater back in 1982.

Barakat hit the Internet, finding the correct Mustang II seats (though they’re not as trashed as the originals, one of the key differences in the original car and this one), valve covers, and so on—all the stuff that had been nearly free scrap the first time around. Hanging in Bodily’s garage all of these years was the original orange dash, which was returned to Barakat. Also returned was the original license plate that had somehow found its way to the East Coast on another car P-wood sold decades ago. Barakat was tasked with machining down a new set of magnesium front wheels, which almost resulted in him burning down his garage.

Time marched slowly during the rebuild-recreation until the news came of the HOT ROD Homecoming event to be held in March 2013. That gave the Deuce duo a completion date, and the thrash began. The build was followed intently in Barakat’s blogs, and fans were not disappointed when late in the afternoon of Homecoming move-in, Barakat pulled into his assigned spot at the Pomona Fairplex.

Three months later, we met up with Rick and Pete at Irwindale Speedway’s drag strip for some eighth-mile squirts (the half-a-track being the only regularly operated dragstrip in Los Angeles County). HOT ROD asked them to set the car on full kill. We didn’t care if they blew it up; we wanted to see what this latest version was capable of. The safety equipment was right up to date—if you’re still writing 1982 on your checks. Longer wheel studs, a driveshaft hoop, and other small details had to be added or changed before the sedan could pass tech. The plan was for Barakat to make a few soft passes that we guestimated would be in the low-12s for the quarter-mile. For that e.t., the sedan didn’t require the full book of safety upgrades it takes once you’re quicker than 11.50 in the quarter or 7.35 in the eighth.

So the first pass by Barakat, without any type of burnout and only feathering it through the launch, netted a 7.62 and a request by the powers-that-be to please leave the premises. By the usual factor of 1.57, that’s roughly 11.96 in the quarter. OK, so we were off a bit. The officials were mad at Barakat, and mad at HOT ROD, saying even if Rick didn’t know what the car was capable of, HOT ROD should have known. Say what?

9/9The 355ci small-block was stuffed with flat top pistons, a mild cam, Z28 intake, and 780-cfm Holley carb—just like the last time. Headers for both versions are by Tom Vandenburg, and note the fabbed linkage, solid motor mounts, and cheap ’80s-era flexi-fan.

Friend Tom Vandenburg, who built the headers for both the original and this sedan, was running his small-block, full-fendered Model A coupe at Irwindale that same night and happened to have a driving suit and arm restraints that would meet the requirements for this window-free ride. So we sent former Bradbury, California, mayor Barakat to work some of that political B.S. he’s acquired over the last 20 years and coax another pass out of the kind folks at Irwindale.

The second and final pass was weak, as Barakat stabbed it just past the tree, sending the Tudor careening sideways. Even with this misstep and subsequent correction, it ran in the low 12s, calculated for the quarter-mile. Irwindale had enough of us that night, so we packed up. P-wood and Barakat were happy to have achieved exactly what they had done 30 years prior. Right down to getting a story in HOT ROD. If only Gray Baskerville was still here to write it!